I realized a few things today. First I realized that having left over, flat Mountain Dew for breakfast with no food in your stomach before you go lifting is a bad idea. Second, I realized that most of the eighth graders I know would trade all of their life’s savings, their parent’s house, their neighbor’s dog, and their best friend’s kidney and left big toe for one Monster. Third, I realized that I hadn’t updated my blog in a week. I realized this because one of my friends and fellow blogie (one who blogs) told me that when he tried to view my blog it freaked out and directed him to a hundred different websites. I had a similar experience when I went to check out the problem except instead of sending me to a different website my computer started yelling at me in different languages and shot quarters out of the CD drive at my face! (Okay, that last part might be an exaggeration…)Anyways, I’m sorry if any of you experienced technical difficulties when trying to access this page. They should all be fixed now.
The reason I haven’t updated my blog in a while is because I haven’t been feeling too creative lately. I drove the short bus for the school two days last week and I think when you drive the short bus you get uncreative, start to wear sweat pants in public places, listen to too much talk radio, and start stopping at rail road crossings for no reason… even when you are jogging. (Short Bus Driving effects may vary in severity from person to person.) But I haven’t driven the short bus for like four or five days now so I think my creative juices are starting to flow. (What are creative juices? Can you drink them? Do they smell bad?)
Jessica and I went to visit my sister and brother-in-law again in Chicago. Okay, we really went to visit their son Atreyu but it was nice to see all of them in the mean time. And since we were headed to Chicago we decided to get lost twice just for traditions sake. I know what question you are all dying to ask so I’ll go ahead and answer it for you. No, Atreyu has not started riding animals yet nor has he started to perfect his shot from behind the ark. In fact, he just sits there and eats, poops, farts, burps, sleeps, and gets the hiccups. So basically he has the life every man on the face of the planet wishes they had. He doesn’t even have to change his own clothes. Man, was I so jealous. So on Saturday when Atreyu was sleeping, farting, eating pooping, burping, and getting the hiccups the rest of us went shopping. Or I should say the girls went shopping and I followed them around from store to store like a lost puppy who was hoping someone walked him past a store that sold something with at least a hint of masculinity. That happened as soon as soon as we stopped for lunch in the food quart.
You see every time I go to Chicago I like to get an authentic slice of Chicago style pizza. So, obviously my food quart choice was Sbarro’s. (Thank you Michael Scott) After the pizza the wandering continued. I realized that shopping was invented for women. For those of you guys who think you like shopping; you’re wrong. You like buying things. Shopping is not buying things. Shopping is wandering around a mall wishing you could buy things. While the ladies shopped I had a good time people watching. I saw a guy with a huge mullet (undoubtedly coming from a wrestling tournament), two girls wearing full soccer gear (seriously, couldn’t they wait to go to the mall when they weren’t covered in grass stains and girl sweat? And where do you play soccer outside in early march when there is still snow on the ground?), and a guy wearing his pants around his knees and carrying more chains around his neck than all the dogs in West Virginian combined. After the mall we returned to my sister’s house and played Mexican trains until dinner.
After dinner we headed down stairs for the concert. When I say concert I mean six adults playing Sing Star and Rock Band. When our family gets together we do several embarrassing things but to the outside world the most embarrassing has to be when we try to sing and play instruments together. We started off slow with a few tunes by Lifehouse and Whitney Houston but the party really got started when we created a playlist of Brittany Spears, M.C. Hammer, and Vanilla Ice. I realized two things that night. First, the 80’s were not kind to Whitney and her hair. Second, a tone deaf, mute, Amish guy who has never heard any music besides hymns in his whole life could rap better than me; but nobody can play Bon Jovi’s ‘Dead or Alive’ on a fake plastic guitar with their eyes closed better than I can.
So my weekend of realizations wasn’t long but it was fun. And while I was driving back to Elkhart without getting lost I had one more realization. What you do with the time you have with your family doesn’t matter all that much because people watching, shopping, and doing embarrassing things with your family is a whole lot better than people watching, shopping, and doing embarrassing things without them. We worry too much about having some fantastic event planned for when we have company and we forget that the reason the company wants to come over in the first place is so they can just spend time with us. Don’t let planned events ruin quality time and cherish every moment you get to spend with those you love because you can’t ever get them back. Well that’s enough realizing for one blog. I’m gonna go buy a Mountain Dew with the quarters my computer gave me. (Drinking Mountain Dew on a full stomach before you do nothing is a good idea…but that’s not a realization. It’s just common sense.)Thanks for reading!
